Monday, January 28, 2013

Our primary collection focus at the Max Kade Institute is German-language books published in North America, so this 1858 volume of Schiller's sämmtliche Werke from the J. G. Cotta'scher Verlag in Stuttgart doesn't really belong here, yet I've been unwilling to give it up. Here's why:

If you look at the spine, just below Schiller, you can see a hole, as if the book were had been burrowed into by a large bug or bookworm. Open the book, and you find this damage, which seems unusually drastic.

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And what is that in the gutter? Is that the worm!?!

Not a worm at all -- turns out to be a bullet!

Can anyone identify this bullet, particularly in terms of how old it might be?

We have to wonder what took place in someone's library long ago: An accidental discharge? A life spared by bad aim? We will probably never know, but the mystery of it keeps this odd volume in our library.

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PS The book's title page is stamped with the name "Edward T. Berkanovic," who we know was a lawyer in Milwaukee and who, in 1990, donated six other items to our Institute.

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25 Years or 325 Years

The Max Kade Institute for German-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (MKI) turned 25 years old in October of 2008. Sounds like a long time, but not much compared to the fact that the first German settlement in North America (Germantown, Pennsylvania) was established some 325 years ago.

We've started this blog as a way to showcase some of the work we're doing. We also see it as an opportunity to examine the influence immigrants have had on America—-after all, except for the indigenous people of the Americas, we're all of immigrant stock here.

We'll post some ideas that are running through our heads these days; we hope you'll find them of interest and will feel like offering your own comments.